Jamie Richards
Photo by Rhianna May Photography
Bio
Jamie Richards is the translator of more than 20 graphic novels from Italian and Spanish as well as books by Ermanno Cavazzoni, Igiaba Scego, Andrea Inglese, Giovanni Orelli, Serena Vitale, and Giancarlo Pastore. Her writing and translation have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, the Massachusetts Review, the Florentine Literary Review, Literary Hub, World Literature Today, and Words Without Borders, among others. Born and raised near Los Angeles, she began translating 20 years ago after taking a workshop with Lawrence Venuti at Temple University, Rome. She went on to complete an MFA in literary translation at the University of Iowa and then a PhD in comparative literature at the University of Oregon. She currently lives in Milan, Italy, where she works for the Balzan Foundation.
Project Description
To support the translation from the Italian of the memoir Down the Square No One's There by Dolores Prato. Born in Rome in 1892 to a widow who already had five children and a lawyer from Calabria who did not recognize her as his child, Prato was sent to live with her aunt and uncle in Treia, a small town in central Italy. She lived in this town from age five to 18, and it is the setting of her 700-page memoir Down the Square No One's There. Though she began writing in the 1940s, she was not able to find a publisher for any of her work. She began writing her memoir in 1973 and it was published in 1980, making Prato an "emerging" writer at the age of 88. The memoir, however, was published as a significantly abridged version without her consent and she was unhappy with it. She passed away three years after its publication, and the unabridged version was not published until 1997. This will be the first time the memoir appears in English.
Focusing minutely on texts that are usually unknown to everyone around them, sometimes spending hours or days thinking about a single word or passage, working largely in isolation, translators are especially prone to getting lost in our own worlds. They are worlds of our own making, and our most fervent desire is to share them. But there is too much to know, and so much to read. So whatever helps us to get our work out, out of our heads and onto the page, out of our own little world and into the wider one, is precious—the interest of readers, the support of colleagues, the attention of reviewers, the care and expertise of editors and publishers. Awards and grants like this one are a true lifeline in an often tenebrous and turbulent sea.
The author I am translating, too, felt like she toiled in obscurity. In her memory, I am grateful for this providential recognition of her importance and my work.